Welfare Dependence

Benjamin Storey & Jenna Silber Storey have a fairly preposterous article in The Weekly Standard about how virtue is awesome and so is John McCain so obviously he'd make a really good president in much the way that we've regularly chosen to put honorable and courageous firefighters directly into high political office or something. Will Wilkinson has at it but draws some general conclusions including an analogy between the sophisticated modernist taste of the liberal individualist and the tackiness of the national greatness conservatism. Julian Sanchez thinks Will's piece is great; Ross Douthat not so much.

I think Will's a bit off-base here myself, but mostly where he goes astray is in treating Storey & Storey in The Weekly Standard as worth taking so seriously. Ross and Will and Julian are all smart people (albeit chock full 'o abhorrent ideas), as are many people on the broad right in America, but what they're missing is that the conservative movement is full of idiots and that's all we're seeing here.

Now I'm not saying that people who usually vote Republican are, on average, dumber than are the people who usually vote for Democrats. And I bet an earlier iteration of the conservative movement -- the one that came up from nothing and took over the Republican Party and the country, the one that built all the institutions of movement conservatism -- was full of bright people. But what we have today is a decadent third generation living in a fairly cushy institutional framework built by their forefathers in which lots of totally unimpressive people with totally unimpressive ideas can nonetheless make nice little lives for themselves. They don't even need to be hardworking or good at fund-raising or particularly likable. There are smart people availing themselves of the odd dose of wingnut welfare, but the fact of its availability keeps lots of silly people hanging around and lots of bad magazines staying in print. The relatively more meager resources available for someone who wants to be a liberal professionally mean that a higher proportion of the people in that line of work are at least good at something.

So Storey & Storey tell us, I think, much more about the authors and about The Weekly Standard than it does aboutd essence of the case for John McCain. If you took a politician I liked and then got a dumb person to explain what was good about him, he'd give you a dumb answer. Conversely a smart, sophisticated person can make a smart, sophisticated case for a bad politician.

Comments

Do I detect a J.S. Mill shout out?

Mill is famous (inter alia) for saying something like 'I'm not saying all conservatives are stupid, but that most stupid people are Conservative.'

Seems pretty apt.

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 28, 2008 4:39 PM

Forget the heavy analysis. The Weekly Standard, as long as William Kristol is the editor, is basically a shill's magazine. Occasionally they publish some good articles, but most of the "opinion" isn't opinion. It's advertising--intended to get you to buy into "National Greatness," which basically means having a large U.S. army in the Middle East forever. If John McCain advocates that, the WS will publish articles explaining why you ought to vote for John McCain. If he starts opposing it, the WS will run articles explaining why you shouldn't vote for John McCain. Don't look for any other logic, because there isn't any.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | January 28, 2008 4:42 PM

A good example of the vacuity of political philosophising. Virtue? Uh...ok.

Posted by Mark | January 28, 2008 4:45 PM

"but what they're missing is that the conservative movement is full of idiots and that's all we're seeing here."

I find it hard to believe you can read my post and think I missed that!

Posted by Will Wilkinson | January 28, 2008 4:50 PM

But what we have today is a decadent third generation living in a fairly cushy institutional framework built by their forefathers in which lots of totally unimpressive people with totally unimpressive ideas can nonetheless make nice little lives for themselves.

Imagine what kind of an idiot, status monkey, or other mindless suckup would be attracted to that movement today.

Oh, wait: we don't have to:

I was approached by YAF’s spokesman, Jason Mattera, on my way to see Newt Gingrich. “Who do you work for?” Mattera demanded, with a touch of petulance. “The Washington Monthly,” I told him. “Are you writing for anyone else?” “I’m blogging for Campus Progress.”

And that did the trick. “There’s the elevator,” Mattera pointed. “I can have one of my interns push the down button.” But it didn’t end there. What happened to the vaunted marketplace of ideas, I asked. The openness and exchange?

You don’t get the sense, talking to Mattera, that he’s really an “ideas” guy. In fact, like a teenager who lords over his little brother, he seems to revel in power for its own sake—blissfully uninterested in arguments, and completely at ease with force. Indeed, the first justification that escaped Mattera’s lips was this: “Because I said so.” Following hot on the heels of hours of speeches in which conservatives insisted, repeatedly and emphatically, that they have the arguments and ideas to knock collegiate liberalism flat, this gem was delivered without the slightest hint of irony.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | January 28, 2008 4:56 PM

So Storey & Storey tell us, I think, much more about the authors and about The Weekly Standard than it does aboutd essence of the case for John McCain.

This is just depressing.

This is the quality of writing put forth by a professor of political science? I'm not sure whether to be alarmed, embarassed, or amused.

If I had handed in something as overwritten and thematically scattershot as this, I don't think my any of my professors would have even given it a "Gentleman's C."

Posted by Brad L | January 28, 2008 4:56 PM

Jesus, that S&S piece is painful to read. If you told me a college freshman wrote it in an all-nighter, I wouldn't disbelieve you.

Posted by whoa | January 28, 2008 5:23 PM

Still need to read the links, but my prejudice is to run away from people who rely too much on notions of "virtue": after all, who gets to decide who is a person of virtue?

Personally, though I am not a Christian, I think "you shall know them by their fruits" is good advice (although Jesus takes a rather aretaic turn after saying that and starts saying that good trees always produce good fruit and bad trees always produce bad fruit ... when things aren't always that simple, especially, when you talk about people rather than trees).

Enough with this "John McCain is a man of virtue", "wouldn't you like to have a beer with GWB", etc crap. Are we trying to find a friend or hiring someone to be the Chief Executive of our government? We aren't a monarchy that happens to elect a king, who should be a person of virtue (whatever that is anyway), but a democratic republic hiring someone to do a job.

It used to be (especially in regards to hatin' on JFK) that conservatives were the first to point this out. But now, thanks in part to the cult of Reagan, conservatives seem to have forgotten what and who the president is. Hopefully, at least we liberals remember ...

Posted by DAS | January 28, 2008 5:24 PM

McCain is like a Monet painting. From a distance he looks good. Former POW, Mr Straight Talk, a maverick.

The closer you get the more of a blotchy mess he is. Dishonest, unpredictably liberal on critical issues, treacherous, mean spirited, dangerous*, and thin skinned. Not the brightest bulb.

(*dangerous because his management style of stubborn, arrogant fighter jock who needs no stinking advice and you are with him or against him is identical to Dubyas - coupled with his Jan 26th claim at a rally you need a an experienced "military man" because the next President will be fighting more wars.

More wars???)

The longer this thing goes the more people see the real McCain.

It may take too long for the truth to come out to stop McCain from getting the nomination from the more qualified Republicans, given the MSM has adored him, acted as his wingman and covered up and protected him all these years - but no way can the MSM enable him to avoid full public scrutiny if he is the nominee - and the public sees lack of intelligence, his poor character and temperment, and reliance that that he was one of 562 Vietnam POWs and thus More Patriotic Than Thou or anyone else. The sad thing is the media never wanted him to win, for 2 years they have worked so McCain can just be Bob Dole 2.0, trussed up for the carving by Inevitable Hillary. Even easier, because McCain lacks the intelligence, leadership abilities, and the deep honor and respect
both Parties held Bob Dole in.

And Monet aside, noting that the more you look, the more you look at his statements over the years on issues the more you see see McCain lies, and lies frequently. Lies are one reason he was passed over as Admiral. Contrasted to Romney, who has led a scandal-free, morally exemplary life and who has never gotten into bed with lobbyists like McCain has, for all his "maverick" protestations.

The latest one is discovery that McCain completely misrepresented his War College thesis. He described it as synthesizing all significant data so he could understand the whole war, all the mistakes, and present the lessons learned and that scholars study it.

The truth is McCain wrote only on a narrow subject. POWs in Korea and Vietnam, and possible changes in the UCMJ to excuse POWs who talk under torture. His grand strategic vision in his thesis was basically change the UCMJ, fight to win so POWs aren't held for many years, and say more good things about soldiers in the media. From his footnotes, McCain did minimal research - 4 books and the UCMJ manual, as well as another paper on POWs.

If his thesis was misrepresented, what other claims McCain has made are bogus? Maybe a few details about his captivity?

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It would be a shame if we miss out on an Obama-Romney Contest. Two highly intelligent, articulate individuals who would be a fascinating matchup. Maybe the best debate matchup, and most future-leaning one, since JFK-Nixon.
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I am also convinced that most of the "flip-flopping" charge on Romney comes from Lefties who still smart that Kerry was killed on changing his vote twice on the same day and who buy into McCain's Victimhood spiel. Truth is, Romney has only "flipped" on one thing, abortion, and did so only after a two-month process of checking with ethicists and theological leaders and Mass constituents before he did so and explained why to the public, while also saying he would not let his personal change reverse what he was elected on. He never flopped back. McCain and Huchabee forces gleefully picked up on the Left & media narrative and continued the "flip-flopper" smear - but in truth, the real flip-floppers who have gone back and forth on several issues are McCain, Edwards, and Hillary.

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Do I detect a J.S. Mill shout out?
Mill is famous (inter alia) for saying something like 'I'm not saying all conservatives are stupid, but that most stupid people are Conservative.'
Seems pretty apt.
Posted by Ben Cronin

Just a sign of the general historical ignorance of Lefties. In Mill's time in Britain, conservative and liberal meant entirely different things than todays liberal fascists and terrorist rights lovers THINK they mean. Edmund Burke was called a great liberal thinker in his time, in making a traditionalist case on the Revolution in France.
In today's Republican Party, the intellectual rigor is from many areas. Federalists, modern libertarian theory, fighting against old post-Marx liberal dogma with a growing academic case that traditional values are rooted in natural law, beginning to challenge the "One Party Rule" of academia, the conservative black movement. Whereas it is the Lefties, rooted in old 60s and 70s beliefs that never panned out - who are the true reactionaries.

Posted by chris ford | January 28, 2008 5:29 PM

" If you took a politician I liked and then got a dumb person to explain what was good about him, he'd give you a dumb answer. "

Caroline Kennedy? But then it'd be "she'd give you a dumb answer."

Posted by Kyle | January 28, 2008 5:35 PM

When the Times hires Kristol (or the Atlantic McArdle) maybe there is something else at work.

Posted by Rob | January 28, 2008 5:36 PM

Just a sign of the general historical ignorance of Lefties. In Mill's time in Britain, conservative and liberal meant entirely different things than todays liberal fascists and terrorist rights lovers ...

OK, now that's funny!
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | January 28, 2008 5:44 PM

ut what we have today is a decadent third generation living in a fairly cushy institutional framework built by their forefathers in which lots of totally unimpressive people with totally unimpressive ideas can nonetheless make nice little lives for themselves.

What does Harvard think of you talking about them this way?

Posted by Steve Balboni | January 28, 2008 5:51 PM

The virtue stuff is interesting, any society should be interested in what sort of men it tends to spit out, but looking at a candidate for President for how he's a symbol of the importance society places on virtue, is to say the least most unconservative in the American sense of the word. Per American conservatism, picking a President is no different in principle from deciding whom to award the maintenance contract on one's dishwasher, symbolism is for Obama supporters.

Per MY's stuff about conservative chattering class members getting stupider, he's right. During the 70's say, when media outlets were monothically liberal (they really were) to be a conservative columnist or talking head, one had to be really smart just to get in. Say what one might like about William F. Buckley or Milton Friedman, or other columnists at the time, stupid is one thing one couldn't say about them. In addition, they couldn't write 'conservatives rule liberals drool' type stuff, if they did they'd get blacklisted, so their columns and commentary had to take the high road, they had to be sincere attempts to persuade, which if one remembers that far back, they succeeded quite a bit at.

Though chattering class institutions do still tilt left, they're not monolithically liberal as they used to be, allowing stupid conservatives a shot, and also allowing 'we rule you drool' type stuff through that couldn't have happened during the 70's say. So the intellectual level of conservative commentary has down and there are plenty of conservative talking cinderblocks out there.

It's also necessary to point out, that though there are exceptions on both sides of the aisle, what is occurring is that conservatives are approaching parity with liberals on this question. The average liberal chattering class member (and there are exceptions to this to be sure) has been a talking cinderblock since at least 1950.

Posted by j mct | January 28, 2008 5:56 PM

Though chattering class institutions do still tilt left - j mct

Define "tilt left". In my experience the chattering class institutions are filled with a bunch of people who tend to think of themselves as liberals (but that "those kids today go too far to the left") even as they really are neo-feudalists.

Indeed, part of the problem we liberals have is that the public perception of us is based on "talking cinderblocks" who are considered by many to be representative of liberals when their views are hardly liberal in any meaningful sense.

Posted by DAS | January 28, 2008 6:02 PM

I think the whole line of argument is broken--every political faction has their own vulgar kitsch. In fact, every subfaction of every political faction has it's own vulgar kitsch--national greatness conservatives, randroids, crunchy cons, multiculturalists, greens, labor--they're all pretty easy to make fun of in aesthetic terms. Nothing is universally beautiful, but moral statements are supposed to be true for all. Casting a political movement as an aesthetic one will always make it look stupid.

Still, though I think the form of argument broken, I have to admit that Will did a pretty good job with a broken tool--I know I've bumped into conservatives exactly like the ones he's described.

Posted by Consumatopia | January 28, 2008 6:03 PM

It would be, I think, a very interesting book...or, at least, a long article, to interview various GOP voters in the country, confront them directly (if politely), with all the lies and corruption for which their politicians are responsible...and see what they say.

In my experience (living in Orange County, I know a lot of conservatives), there is an interesting brand of GOP loyalist who is very bright, but in denial. It seems to me that these otherwise quite intelligent loyalists are engaged in an act of denial, so they simply don't have to acknowledge the truth of the lies and corruption. The incompetence and distinctly fascistic tendencies of the modern GOP.

It's not really a form of stupidity with them. It's a neurotic response to an intolerable psychological situation. They *believe* what they want to believe, and simply ignore and deny all facts that would contradict that belief. Simple as that.

I've seen this enough times to know it's the case.

I don't know if any intelligent GOP loyalist will ever come to their senses. I expect not. It's the kind of neurotic problem that can probably be resolved only by years of therapy. And I'm not kidding. I'm serious.

Posted by LL | January 28, 2008 6:12 PM

FWIW, I agree with W.W. on so-called "National Greatness Conservatism"(*), but couldn't this

National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up.

also apply to certain quasi-libertarian movements of which WW would be supportive?

(*I would actually call myself a "National Greatness Conservative", but I would mean by it something rather opposed to what it means in this context ... rather I would be refering to a "This Country is Pretty Good -- Let's conserve that which has made it Pretty Good ... ya know, like Certain Big Gummint Liberal Programs so-called conservatives are wont to hate" ideology)

Posted by DAS | January 28, 2008 6:17 PM

Actually, the Republican primary has turned utterly radioactive -- Romney and McCain have started using the L-Word on each other:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_el_pr/republicans_florida

"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Mitt Romney and John McCain accused each other Monday of being liberals, a charge tantamount to blasphemy in the caustic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. "

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Hee hee. "In your heart you know he's Right --er, Left."

Posted by Don Williams | January 28, 2008 6:20 PM

Re LL's comment "I don't know if any intelligent GOP loyalist will ever come to their senses. I expect not. It's the kind of neurotic problem that can probably be resolved only by years of therapy. And I'm not kidding. I'm serious."
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Actually, I belonged to the Young Republican Club during the Nixon era.

Although that perhaps proves your point.

Posted by Don Williams | January 28, 2008 6:24 PM

While I agree with Will's point regarding (at least a certain very vocal subset of) conservatives wholeheartedly, I also think that Ross makes a very good point when he calls most modernist design and the ideology that goes with it inhuman. If you have no money, you tend to live in one of those modernist cardboard boxes, once you have a little money and a bit of style, you will probably try moving into a house that at least looks like it was built no later than the 30s. If you have a whole lot of money, modernism becomes interesting again.

Posted by novakant | January 28, 2008 6:29 PM

See I’mma tell you like WU told me
Cash Rules everything around me

Posted by Jonah Goldberg | January 28, 2008 6:37 PM

I'll be glad to compare historical knowledge and training with Chris Ford any day (though I'm really not convinced he is anything more than a performance artist). I'm particularly looking forward to his upcoming book, published by UNC, entitled: MY STORY: EMBODYING THE PATHOLOGIES OF THE CONTEMPORARY RIGHT. A take derived from Foucault, no doubt.

One of the problems of responding to a troll like Ford is that it takes five times as long to unpack his lunacy and outright falsehoods as it does for him to make them.

But, I will nevertheless try --

First off, there is a direct lineage from the Tories of Mill's day to the Tories of today, inasmuch as they are the same party; and whereas the Liberal Party has been replaced in the U.K. by Labour since the 1920s, a direct lineage between Mill and Labour (or, more aptly, the Lib Dems).

As for Ford's nonsensical argument that, inasmuch as you can match mid-19th C. British politics onto today (which you can't), Mill and Gladstone would be on the _Right_, consider: obviously, many of the anti-statist arguments of Mill et al. have been taken up by the Reagan-Thatcher wing of the Anglo-American Right. But it does not follow that Mill et al. were actually Right-wing. Indeed, it was neither Conservative then, nor Conservative now, to argue for the rights of women, to side with the colonials in imperial disputes (Burke -- he may have been a Whig, but he was no liberal; not that I expect Chris Ford to care about things like facts), to advocate home rule for those self-same colonies, to argue for strict seperation of church and state, to show concern for the writ of habeas corpus, and so forth.

On the other hand, the party that is today advocating a racialized war on Teh Islam and endless Dominion over the Brown-skins would have done quite alright with Palmerston, Lord Salisbury and Joseph Chamberlain.

I'll be looking forward to a response from Chris Ford (noted expert on 19th C. Britain) that has never been made with such detail or care;

or,

a John Birch-style rant, dripping with vitriol and race-hatred.

You decide which is more likely.

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 28, 2008 6:46 PM

If you have no money, you tend to live in one of those modernist cardboard boxes, once you have a little money and a bit of style, you will probably try moving into a house that at least looks like it was built no later than the 30s. If you have a whole lot of money, modernism becomes interesting again.

In the context of Will's post, though, he was contrasting modernist interiors, which are designed to be clean, simple, and useful, to the garish and tacky pseudo-opulent interiors which are the poseur's impression of an "impressive" space.

Posted by Tyro | January 28, 2008 7:04 PM

he was contrasting modernist interiors, which are designed to be clean, simple, and useful, to the garish and tacky pseudo-opulent interiors

same thing: Ikea is clean, simple and useful, but also crap and everybody knows it, which is why the upwardly mobile outgrow it eventually and go looking for apartments with "period features" - what might once have been in part an effort to get people out of dismal housing conditions with outdoor toilets and whatnot has mutated into soulless mass production, while living in pre-modernist designs has become a sign of individuality; and even those who really can afford the "the best modernist design" and the spaces needed to do it justice overwhelmingly tend to mix and match it with more ornamental elements dating back to earlier periods - there's a reason for that

Posted by novakant | January 28, 2008 7:46 PM

Personally, I think Millian liberalism is actually a pretty good approximation of contemporary American liberalism. This is, of course, untrue of classical liberalism in general, such as that of Bestiat, Smith, Hayek, Constant, etc, but in the case of Mill, he had a general respect for markets mixed with just a bit of a social democratic streak that seems to fit in with American Liberalism -- pro-market, but not orthodox free marketers.

Anyway, Will Wilkinson, re: "I find it hard to believe you can read my post and think I missed that!" I don't presume to speak for Matt Yglesias here, but my sense is that your view is that National Greatness conservatism is idiotic as an ideology, while Matt Yglesias's point is that the specific proponents of it tend to be mediocrities for specific, proximal, historical reasons.

Posted by Julian Elson | January 28, 2008 8:49 PM

Note: Re: my argument about Mill being generally pro-market but not orthodox, which fits in with contemporary American liberalism, I think that one might distinguish here between Ezra Klein-style "progressives," who tend to regard markets as guilty until proven innocent (but don't have a very high standard for proving innocence), with Brad DeLong-style "American liberals," who tend to regard markets as innocent until proven guilty (but don't have a very high standard for proving guilt). It's a somewhat subtle difference, but I think that it does exist.

Posted by Julian Elson | January 28, 2008 8:57 PM

I have nothing to add except that I think Wilkinson's characterization of "national greatness conservatism" as emotionally-driven, juvenile, and psuedo-fascist is spot on.

Posted by Jeff | January 28, 2008 10:19 PM

"Indeed, it was neither Conservative then, nor Conservative now, to argue for the rights of women, to side with the colonials in imperial disputes (Burke -- he may have been a Whig, but he was no liberal; not that I expect Chris Ford to care about things like facts), to advocate home rule for those self-same colonies, to argue for strict seperation of church and state, to show concern for the writ of habeas corpus, and so forth."

Mill was pro-imperialism. In On Liberty, he writes how Chinese and Indian societies had become old and stagnant and needed to be schooled by the young, virile Brits (ironically foreshadowing some of the arguments of the Japanese fascists). The question becomes then whether a Mill today would have evolved with the times, but this can be as useless and a waste of time as wondering what would happen if your parents had never met.

However, in this way he would be on the right today in ways that reflect poorly on the right. I would also put the Tories today to the left of the Republican Party (Democratic leaders love to joke how they love going to Britain because all three major parties since WII, except for under Thatcher, were basically like one face or another of our Democratic Party). I'm not a fan of Thatcher, but she stood on her own two feet as a strong, indepdent woman. Meddling with abortion rights is also not kosher even among the British moderate right.

Posted by Reality Man | January 28, 2008 10:51 PM

What an embarrassment this post is. Yglesias (and Wilkinson, for that matter) seem to have seen the word “virtue” in the subtitle of an article in the Weekly Standard, and to have filled in the blanks without taking the trouble to read the piece in the first place. To call an article “preposterous,” “not worth taking seriously,” and to refer to its authors as “idiots” without answering any of its arguments is both childish and thuggish. In an odd way, this sort of intellectual style mimics nicely the vices Yglesias & co. accuse the Storeys of.

As I read them, the Storeys make two rather modest points. They want to say (1) that conservatives should be able to debate tax cuts, campaign finance, environmental legislation, and similar issues. These issues should not be decided ahead of time according to “free-market ideology” – the claim that taxes and government regulation are in every case undesirable. The philosophical claim motivating “free-market ideology” is that individuals are (or ought to be) self-interested and rational, and that self-interest is sufficient for a good, healthy society. Against this claim, the Storeys suggest that some measure of virtue – which they define rather narrowly as ‘service to something greater than oneself’ (i.e. not mere selfishness) – is necessary for a good political life. They also want to say (2) that virtue is possible, i.e. that the cynical claim that McCain’s apparent concern for public service is mere vanity is misplaced. One might disagree with both arguments (particularly the second), but they are not “preposterous” or some symptom of the third generation of conservatism, or whatever Yglesias’ rather crude armchair sociology would suggest.

The Storeys don’t say anything that suggests (to a minimally generous reader) the taste of blood or “sacrificing one’s life for the Volksreich” (Wilkinson); nor do they even really raise the “wartime heroism” that Douthat has attributed to them. Their biggest mistake seems to have been to publish a piece in the Standard, as this magazine evidently summons the inner demons of Yglesias & co. But surely a fairly intelligent article deserves more than the insults that Yglesias offers. Or maybe “reading Aristotle in the Greek” (Wilkinson) isn’t as good a preparation for thinking seriously about politics as having one’s very own blog.

Posted by HL | January 28, 2008 11:21 PM

Fair points reality man, and HL.

But HL, do you really think the National Greatness conservatives are sophisticated neo-Aristotelian republicans, or basically just want to go "throw some crappy country up against the wall every ten years" because they feel like it?

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 28, 2008 11:26 PM

To add onto Ben Cronin's response to HL, one can definitely point to someone like Eisenhower as having more personal virtue than many people who have served as president (especially if we interpret it in the sense of ancient virtu`) after leading the Atlantic theater in WWII. However, neocons and national greatness conservatives see him as meek and tend to lean more towards an actor who portrayed virtue on screen and a guy who thought virtue was accusing people of being gay Jewish pink intellectual Nazi communists.

Posted by Reality Man | January 29, 2008 12:16 AM

Ben,

To some degree that's a fair critique of the followers of National Greatness Conservatism, but intellectual vacuity is a feature of most political movements.

You think more than a tiny fraction of liberals have read A Theory of Justice much less understood it? Or are they just pissed that their boss's last raise was bigger than theirs, and want to put the screws to him and all his rich friends?

80% of American families didn't buy a book last year, so any political movement is going to consist largely of the poorly informed and irrational. That's just life.

Also any movement whose list of publications includes Mother Jones should be circumspect when accusing the other side of low standards.

Posted by heedless | January 29, 2008 1:14 AM

To me, the distinction between liberals and conservatives isn't the preponderance of idiots that fill their ranks-I'm sure the ratios are almost the same. It's that, most conservatives are stupid and mean, whereas most liberals are just stupid. I think that's an important distinction.

Posted by gerontion | January 29, 2008 1:55 AM

Ford: "with a growing academic case that traditional values are rooted in natural law"

There is no such thing as "natural law". There is physics, chemistry, a few other known sciences, the theory (with convincing evidence) of evolution, and not much else.

"Traditional values" are bullshit in almost all cases, except to chimps who think the world started sometime around 1900 or 1776 at best - and it wasn't true then.

"The philosophical claim motivating “free-market ideology” is that individuals are (or ought to be) self-interested and rational, and that self-interest is sufficient for a good, healthy society. Against this claim, the Storeys suggest that some measure of virtue – which they define rather narrowly as ‘service to something greater than oneself’ (i.e. not mere selfishness) – is necessary for a good political life."

There IS NO "something greater than oneself". The only thing Ayn Rand ever got right was that values depend on life. Survival is the only value - all else is dependent on that. That happens to have corollaries of course - one of which is that survival must be, as William Burroughs put it, "computed in immortal terms. Beware a fool's survival."

One's own life has infinite value. Everyone else's is somewhat less - how much less depends on their usefulness to oneself. The notion that one's life should be subservient to some other existent - especially some vapid "concept" which can't even be precisely defined - is merely a scam promoted by those who wish to enlist you in the service of THEIR life - not yours.

Bottom line: The Storey's want to sacrifice you on their altar of the state - or maybe just for some war profits - or their notion of who should be the alpha chimp in the troop, which means, in this case, of course, McCain.

Fuck 'em.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 29, 2008 2:05 AM

Incidentally, this is where I reference John Holbo's famous review of Dead Right and 'dark satanic millian liberalism':

"But that’s not the brilliant part. The brilliant part is Empson's correct perception (I think it is correct, anyway) 1) that lots of thoroughly disparate matters are hereby artfully collected and crammed into one simple image; 2) an illicit feeling is generated that economics is, magically, a function not so much of social or cultural arrangements as aesthetic ones. There is a potent aesthetic to Empson’s ideal worker, and Frum and Bennett are in the grips of an analogous aesthetic. And the feeling is: if only we achieve aesthetic satisfaction here, economics will take care of itself."

--------

"A good example of the vacuity of political philosophising. Virtue? Uh...ok."

Hey, it worked for Robespierre . . .

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The odd thing is, reading Will's post, I rather prefer the"grotesque wood-paneled den stuffed with . . . garish carpets, and a giant roaring fire." - although I'd replace the animal heads and swords with some tasteful prints of upland fowl in and hunting dogs in autumn . . .

Posted by Dan S. | January 29, 2008 7:00 AM

Cronin and Reality Man (and echoing heedless): I agree that there are plenty of “National Greatness Conservatives” who seem, at bottom, to love war (one thinks of Norman Podhoretz), but there are also plenty who, while their ideas may be wrong, seem fair-minded and fairly smart (e.g. David Brooks on good days). Since basically every ideological position on the map is occupied simultaneously by idiots and non-idiots, a fair reader has to do his best not to jump to conclusions before reading, I think. Anyway, I’m not sure if the Storeys are “sophisticated neo-Aristotelian republicans,” but they certainly don’t seem like idiots to me. So lumping them with the worst among the National Greatness crowd is unfair and intellectually lazy.

Mr. Hack, how would your wife and kids (or mother?) feel about your claim that “One's own life has infinite value. Everyone else's is somewhat less - how much less depends on their usefulness to oneself”? One can debate, of course, whether someone should sacrifice for one’s country, but the claim that virtue = sacrifice of some sort or another seems fairly straightforward to me.

Posted by HL | January 29, 2008 11:39 AM

Hack's a sociopath. This is a surprise?

Posted by Dan S. | January 29, 2008 12:57 PM